Tag Archives: Ben Ramsden

This Queer House

★★★★

VAULT Festival 2020

This Queer House

This Queer House

Network Theatre

Reviewed – 28th February 2020

★★★★

 

“takes audiences on an unpredictable and ultimately fulfilling journey to self-discovery”

 

“This Queer House” is a delightfully strange, unique take on the contact zones between queer lives, history, and the non-queer world at large. It (mostly) avoids trite observations and instead uses symbolism and striking imagery to make its point about space, place and identity.

In Oakley Flanagan’s explosive and challenging script, a young queer couple, Oli (Liv Ello) and Leah (Humaira Iqbal), move into a house inherited by a dead uncle. But the house has a history. A male builder (Lucia Young) is called in to do some renovation work and the disruption does more than just alter the house. In a series of scenes, the house’s legacy is unleashed, branding itself on the queer pair trying to live their new life together: the expectations of owning property, gender roles, and questions of conformity arise as the house slowly gets messier and messier. Will the couple survive this interrogation with the past? You’ll have to see it to find out.

Directed by Masha Kevinovna of the OPIA Collective, this piece’s strengths lie in the montage that takes up the second half of the production. Taking us through the history of the house in disconnected moments, sometimes with text, sometimes without, Kevinovna conjures the dreamy landscape of memory and history. Young, playing multiple roles, is stunning to watch, and here is given license to really go for it. From South London builder to rigid 50s housewife, Young is physically precise, loud, clear, in control and unpredictable. It’s their performance that keeps this play such an exciting watch.

As the piece slips away from the conventional opening few scenes, Ben Ramsden’s compelling, unsettling score is also given time to shine. Reminiscent of Bernard Herrman’s work on “Psycho”, Ben twists the action towards the horrific, indeed the melodramatic, but nonetheless keeps building up the feeling of dread. Cara Evans’ design is similarly effective. The house is white tape, with wooden window and door frames dotted in the corners. The tape poses as a boundary, but of course is easily traversed, altered. There is a real sense of cohesion between all aspects of this production which is what makes watching so strangely compelling.

Iqbal and Ello don’t quite gel as a couple on stage and both need to relax and settle into the characters more as the run goes on. That aside, this was an intriguing night at the theatre. By being daring with form and content, “This Queer House” takes audiences on an unpredictable and ultimately fulfilling journey to self-discovery.

 

Reviewed by Robert Frisch

Photography by Tara Rooney

 

VAULT Festival 2020

 

 

Click here to see all our reviews from VAULT Festival 2020

 

The Girl With Glitter in Her Eye

★★½

The Bunker

The Girl With Glitter in Her Eye

The Girl With Glitter in Her Eye

The Bunker

Reviewed – 13th January 2020

★★½

 

“Some really vital themes are at stake … but the overall framing and direction lets these things down”

 

We enter the space to ethereal piano playing from Ben Ramsden, who is also the composer of the piece. Dressed in soft blues he echoes the set, designed by Cara Evans: a white chair, white boxes, white coffee cups, white sheet, and blue fringe hanging lightly over a white background. Hanging in the foreground is a beautiful piece, refracting light and so changing colour throughout the show. A good design, although a little distracting considering how little it is interacted with during the show.

Helen (Modupe Salu) is an artist, with one chance to impress an eccentric art director (Naomi Gardener) who wants work that shocks, that reflects her ‘background’, or as Helen translates it, she wants art about trauma. Helen co-runs a cafe with best mate Phil (Anna Mackay), and when Phil shares her own story of trauma with Helen, a story of sexual violence, Helen begs to use Phil’s trauma as the subject of her painting.

There are some really interesting themes in this piece, although perhaps too many at play simultaneously for it to feel cohesive. The way that trauma is exploited in art is discussed, as well as a privileged art world that thrives off this trauma that isn’t theirs. Equally the art world is portrayed as a very inaccessible space, and the barriers to it are clearly displayed. The play talks about sexual violence, and particularly the way it is depicted and discussed, in a really insightful and painful way. Finally it delves into whether you can ever tell someone else’s story, and the repercussions of trying to do so.

The Girl With Glitter in Her Eye is unnecessarily framed by three furies, that the three actors morph in and out of. Unfortunately this device takes us away from the real story of the play, lifts us out of a reality every time we are beginning to care about, and as a spectacle, feels amateurish in the use of vocal sound and movement. It is a distracting choice that doesn’t add anything to the way the story is told. Masha Kevinovna is both writer and director and this is certainly a moment where both writing and direction failed the piece. In general, better pacing in the writing would also have helped lift the moments of comedy earlier on  which frequently fail to land. As a whole the show is lacking a sense of through line, a flow that keeps it all together, keeps it all moving.

The actors are much stronger when playing real people. Modupe Salu delivers a particularly strong performance as Helen, conflicted and passionate. Anna Mackay’s Phil is also lovely, simultaneously hard and vulnerable.

Some really vital themes are at stake in The Girl with Glitter in her Eye, but the overall framing and direction let these things down. A commitment to engaging with these themes in a more immediate way might make it stronger.

 

Reviewed by Amelia Brown

Photography by Victoria Double

 


The Girl With Glitter in Her Eye

The Bunker until 1st February

 

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue:
Funeral Flowers | ★★★½ | April 2019
Fuck You Pay Me | ★★★★ | May 2019
The Flies | ★★★ | June 2019
Have I Told You I’m Writing a Play About my Vagina? | ★★★★ | July 2019
Jade City | ★★★ | September 2019
Germ Free Adolescent | ★★★★ | October 2019
We Anchor In Hope | ★★★★ | October 2019
Before I Was A Bear | ★★★★★ | November 2019
I Will Still Be Whole (When You Rip Me In Half) | ★★★★ | November 2019
My White Best Friend And Even More Letters Best Left Unsaid | ★★★★ | November 2019

 

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